Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Ernest Hemingway as photographed for the 1940 edition of For Whom the Bell Tolls. The iceberg theory or theory of omission is a writing technique coined by American writer Ernest Hemingway. As a young journalist, Hemingway had to focus his newspaper reports on immediate events, with very little context or interpretation.
The iceberg theory has been termed the "theory of omission". Hemingway believed a writer could convey an object or concept while writing about something entirely different. In "Big Two-Hearted River" he elaborates on the mundane activities Nick carries out.
In A Moveable Feast Hemingway wrote that "Out of Season", written in 1924, was the first story where he applied the theory of omission, known as his Iceberg Theory. He explained that the stories in which he left out the most important parts, such as not writing about the war in "Big Two-Hearted River", are the best of his early fiction. [ 33 ]
The piece is an early experiment in Hemingway's "theory of omission"—later to be known as the Iceberg Theory—in which nonessential information is left out or barely hinted at. [9] The story has attracted little attention from literary critics and much of that examines the allusions to Renaissance painters. [ 10 ]
According to the book Hemingway's Cats, Hemingway wrote the story as a tribute to his wife Hadley. The couple had only been married a few years and lived in Paris, where she was often left alone for hours at a time while her husband worked. She asked for a cat, but he told her they were too poor.
Hemingway's prose has been extensively analysed for its minimalistic style, which came to be known as the Iceberg theory of omission. According to Meyers, a respected biographer of Hemingway, Hemingway believed the quality of an author's work is assessable by the respective quality of the words eliminated.
Hemingway critic Wendolyn Tetlow writes that the overall confusion in the story underscores its title. The husband and wife are at odds after an apparent misunderstanding; the waitress is confused at the husband's order; Peduzzi has a secret but the townspeople seem to know what it is.
The title "Hills Like White Elephants" is a symbol within Hemingway's short story that requires analysis to depict its meaning and relevance to the story as well. Repetition of words and phrases is a common trait found within Hemingway's short story, a habit that is not done without cause.